


The True You

by writing_addiction



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 11:44:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18810229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_addiction/pseuds/writing_addiction
Summary: While thinking about the events of the past few years, Cloud visits Aerith's church.  Gratitude, he decides, is much preferable to guilt.





	The True You

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the newest FF7R trailer and had some Feelings™ and some Realizations™. Playing this game in Ultra HD is gonna destroy me, and I'm so ready for it. This was written in about two hours, is unbeta'ed, and has had only the bare minimum of editing, so apologies if there are any glaring mistakes, but I have to get it postes before I start picking it apart and hating it and toss it in the garbage can. What the fuck even are verbs tenses?? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

At the time, he hadn't understood why Aerith had said it.  It was something that confused him nearly to the point of anger.  She'd spoken the words so easily, as if it were something plainly obvious, and it had taken years for Cloud to really understand what she'd meant.

In hindsight, he knew that _of course_ it had been plainly obvious to her.  She had known Zack just as well or maybe even better than he had.  She had loved him just as much, no matter how she might have tried to downplay their connection during their conversation in the slums.  They'd had a relationship of sorts--as much as you could have when you were at Shinra's beck and call 24/7. Aerith could spot every personality trait Cloud's poor traumatized brain had pulled from his memories of Zack.  The easy confidence, the cool and collected demeanor, the way he adored her like she was the only thing in the universe that mattered.

The squats, even.

And on top of all of that, she knew about the Buster Sword.  She knew that the weapon Cloud carried had once belonged to Zack, and to Angeal before him.  She knew how Zack had inherited it, and she must have known what had transpired for it to have come into Cloud's possession.

The moment she laid eyes on him, fallen through the roof of that old church just like Zack had done, she knew.  She must have done. Aerith was a smart woman, after all. Raised in the slums and pursued by Shinra for the majority of her life, she was absolutely no fool.  She wore her kindness and her softness and her gentle smile at her sleeve right alongside her grit and her physical strength and her hard-won realism.

This was the very same woman who had comforted and cared for a tiny, frightened Marlene within hours of threatening to rip off Don Corneo's balls.  She was clever enough to read the writing on the wall, as it were.

And who knows?  Maybe she hadn't let herself admit it at first.  Maybe she was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe she thought it was a coincidence, that she was reading too much into it.  But at some point, she had reasoned out his whole fucked-up deal in her head. And she'd even tried to confront him about it!  She'd dragged him out of his room at the Gold Saucer's shitty haunted hotel (not that he was particularly against spending time alone with her) and onto the gondola ride.  Without any pretense, she'd said, “First off, it bothered me how you looked exactly alike. Two completely different people, but you look exactly the same. The way you walk, and gesture….  I think I must have seen him again in you.”

And the whole time, he'd been desperately trying to figure out what in the blazing hells she was talking about.  At the time, he put it down to wishful thinking: her first boyfriend had been a SOLDIER First Class, just like Cloud, and she was seeing resemblances that weren't really there.

“Cloud, I'm searching for you,” she'd said, looking out the gondola's window as a thousand fireworks lit up the night sky.  “I want to meet you.”

“But I'm right here,” he'd replied.  (Shiva's tits, how could he have been so goddamn _stupid_?)

“I know, I know.  What I meant was, I want to meet…”  Her sentence had trailed off a little as she turned her attention fully back to him.  Her gaze had scanned over him once in a way that made him slightly uncomfortable, as if she could see directly into the deepest parts of his soul.  And then she'd looked directly into his eyes, and he felt entirely laid bare on front of her in a way he still didn't know how to express. “... _you._ ”

He'd broken eye contact as the gondola had pulled back into the station then, giving him a respite he sorely needed.  He'd thought about her words for days on end, not understanding why she'd made such a proclamation or why it had shaken him as deeply as it had.  Here they were on a date, and she was talking about _meeting_ him?  How absurd.

Something deep inside him, locked away and smothered by shock and heartbreak and mourning, had tried to break free and surface, but he hadn't been ready for it yet.  It had taken another round of mako poisoning and the literal intervention of the Lifestream itself guiding Tifa through his memories to help him return to his real self.  But he couldn't deny that the conversation he'd had with Aerith at the Gold Saucer had helped to ease him in the right direction.

She'd wanted to know _Cloud_ , the real Cloud, and he hadn't been able to give that to her.  It was just another thing that he used to feel guilty for.

But now, after he had been given the time and the space to process everything, in between saving the world every few years, he no longer felt that guilt.  It was hard to deny it a place to grow sometimes, but he knew if he gave it an inch, it would take a mile. It would convince him to isolate himself from his friends and family like he had before, to hide his fears and weaknesses from them, to deny himself the help and companionship he desperately needed.

But even still, he felt a certain...obligation to Aerith.  She'd prayed for Holy on behalf of the people of Gaia, she'd healed him and everyone else of Geostigma.  She'd done so much for him, even after she died, and he knew he would never be able to repay that debt.

But he could try.  He could maybe give her one thing.

His trips to the church were different now than they used to be.  He used to go there to get away from the prying eyes of his loved ones, an attempt to hide his illness and his fears.  He was running away from everything all the time. He started the delivery service to run away from the crowded streets of Edge as people tried to rebuild their lives.  He started living out of the church to run away from Tifa, who would have at some point gotten fed up with his bullshit and confronted him. She had done just that, in fact, but the only reason she hadn't done it _sooner_ was because he'd been purposely avoiding her.

But now…?  Now he goes to Aerith's church to be close to her again.  He goes there to have a moment of peace in the one place on the Planet he can still feel her spirit.  It's in the gentle breeze, and in the warm sunlight, and in the beauty of the flowers that still grow there without anyone attending to them.  It's in the protection given by the stone walls, and in the softness of the earth beneath his feet, and the birdsong that fills the air in the early morning.  It's in the cleansing nature of the rain that he only finds when it falls near this building.

She is everywhere here, a comforting presence in every corner, and he can think of no better place to try and repay his debt.  Maybe it's too little, too late. But he'll never know if he doesn't give it a shot.

He kneels in front of the flowers like he always does and speaks as if there's actually someone there to listen to him. 

She wanted so desperately to know him back then, to know who he really was behind the facade he'd constructed to protect himself, and it really, truly is the least he can do to show his gratitude.


End file.
